The only way to reverse climate change

You're reading the first-ever Green Juice #sponsored content.

And I couldn't be more excited.

I'm working with a startup called Atalanta Climate to tell the world about their first-of-a-kind product.

Its name is Ovi, and it checks all the boxes:

✅ Actually fights climate change
✅ Improves your productivity and sleep quality
✅ Looks really cool

How, exactly, does Ovi accomplish all that? Keep reading!

Or, if you can't wait, head on over to the Atalanta site and reserve yourself an Ovi right now. Tell 'em Green Juice sent ya.

For those of you who like to know what you're purchasing... let's dig in.

We gotta do something about all this carbon

Here's an interesting fact: if humanity ever reaches the incredibly ambitious climate goal known as Net Zero—that is, if we manage to completely stop spewing any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—then all we will have accomplished is the stabilization of a deeply fucked up climate.

To put it another way, we're already kinda screwed. We've released so much carbon gas into the air that we can't just quit cold turkey tomorrow and expect things to get better.

If we actually want to re-stabilize the climate (I do!), we need to do more than just reduce our carbon output. We need to actively remove carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere.

But how, exactly, does one remove billions of metric tons of an invisible, scentless gas from the very air we breathe?

And once it's been removed... what do we do with it?

Friends, welcome to the weird, wild world of Carbon Capture.

Carbon Capture: you can do it a couple ways

1. Point Source Capture

The first approach is Point Source Capture, in which one attempts to snatch up the carbon dioxide produced by power plants/factories/etc. at the moment it's released.

Imagine vacuuming up your farts the second they leave your butt and then burying the vacuum bag deep underground. Sorry, but that's the best metaphor we have.

In theory, you could burn fossil fuels "cleanly" by Hoovering up all the carbon dioxide that gets released as they combust. There are some big issues with the Point Source Capture industry that I won't expound upon here, but the gist is that it's very expensive, energy intensive, not particularly effective, and promoted and funded by fossil fuel interests who'd really like to keep extracting and burning oil and gas forever, please.

Thankfully, the second approach is far more promising—though not without its own issues.

2. Direct Air Capture

Direct Air Capture is when you pull carbon dioxide gas out of the air, turn it into solid matter, and bury it underground forever.

Kind of metal, no?

Until literally today—we're gonna get back to Ovi, I promise—the only Direct Air Capture (DAC) projects in the world have been huge, industrial operations with names like Mammoth. Mammoth is a big old DAC and carbon storage plant in the fittingly hardcore country of Iceland.

This bad boy is capable of removing up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ from the air every year—and does so cleanly, because it's powered entirely by Iceland's naturally occurring geothermal heat.

How DAC works

Those white rows in the picture above are giant fans. The fans pull air through either a filter and/or a naturally occurring material called a sorbent. A sorbent is a substance that collects molecules from the air through the act of sorption. Not to be confused with absorption, which is what a sponge does, or sorbet, a delicious frozen treat, but sorption, i.e. "the process by which a solid holds molecules of a gas or liquid or solute as a thin film."

As it so happens, some sorbents are very good at bonding with carbon dioxide gas.

Once enough CO₂ has collected on the sorbent, the machine cranks up the temperature to release the gas, which is then dissolved into water, compressed, and injected into underground volcanic basalt rock. There, the carbonated water (seltzer, anyone?) chemically reacts with rocks to form "stable carbonate minerals", i.e. more rocks.

It sort of sounds like a tragic Greek myth, where your punishment for causing climate change (or for not hooking up with Zeus) is to be turned into a pile of limestone.

Here's a visual depiction courtesy of Dr. Aarati:

Once it's been secured underground, the carbon is officially removed from the atmosphere, no longer trapping the sun's rays, for what we hope will be geological timescales.

Wild stuff, right? I frickin' love science!!!

How effective is DAC?

The Mammoth plant can capture and store up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ a year. That's not nothing. In fact, it's pretty darned impressive. But it's not quiiiite enough.

I don't really want to tell you how much CO₂ we crazy humans are emitting every year (if you're not taking a big sip of coffee right now, feel free to click this link). Suffice it to say, we're gonna need a lot more Mammoths.

But there aren't too many places on Earth with enough clean geothermal energy production (yet...) to power big industrial DAC facilities. They need a lot of power to get hot enough to separate the captured CO₂ from the sorbent.

But what if there was an alternative to the huge, industrial, energy guzzling DAC facilities? One that captured carbon where it was more abundant, so it wouldn't have to work as hard? And also doubled as an incredibly effective air purifier?

Folks, I'm so jazzed to finally tell you about Ovi.

The first-ever home DAC device

Ovi is the first Direct Air Capture device ever designed for the home... and it just so happens to double as arguably the most effective air purifier on the market.

Ovi's advantages

Little Ovi can pull up to 1 ton of carbon dioxide out of the air every single year. It turns the carbon into limestone rock dust, which can be composted, used as fertilizer, tossed with the garbage, or proudly displayed on the mantle.

1 ton! If every home in America had an Ovi, it'd be like adding 4,500 new Mammoth factories.

But Ovi doesn't just pull CO₂ out of the air. It's also equipped with a HEPA filter and active carbon, which together filter out dust, pollen, wildfire particles, nasty particulate matter pollution, formaldehyde, and even odors.

Less carbon in the air = improved cognition and better sleep

A year-long study conducted by Harvard's School of Public Health found that poor air quality—as measured by a high concentration of CO₂ and particulate matter—is associated with acute reductions in cognitive function.

"It’s the first time we’ve seen these short-term effects among younger adults,” said Jose Guillermo Cedeño Laurent, lead author of the study.

The study suggests that poor indoor air quality affects health and productivity significantly more than was previously understood.

A second study from Environmental Health Perspectives conducted a similar experiment in which participants spent a week in either a conventional office or an environmentally controlled office with lower concentrations of volatile chemicals and lowered CO₂ levels.

Cognitive scores were 101% higher in the purified office environment.

As someone who works from home and starts to get sleepy around 11am, 101% higher productivity is an appealing idea.

Yet a third study conducted by the National Library of Medicine focused on the relationship between CO₂ and sleep. They concluded that "both subjective and physiological results showed that sleep quality decreased significantly with the increase of CO₂ concentration."

Notably, the study used a CO2 concentration of 800 ppm (parts per million) for the decreased level of CO₂—Ovi promises to bring your CO₂ levels all the way down to 200 ppm. That just so happens to be the level of CO₂ we used to breathe before the Industrial Revolution.

How much would you pay for 80%+ better sleep quality? I'm gonna guess less than what Ovi costs—especially since it's discounted 30% right now.

Less energy intensive

Ovi uses far less energy on a relative basis than the big industrial plants. Here's why:

1. CO₂ is up to 3 times more concentrated indoors than outdoors. Makes sense, right? We literally breathe out CO₂. So Ovi just doesn't need to work as hard to find the carbon in the air... because it's all around us. Gulp.
2. Because Ovi's filled with groundbreaking technology, it doesn't need to get hot to separate CO₂ from its sorbent: Ovi can do it at room temperature. How 'bout that?

The punchline is that Ovi only uses about 8–15% more electricity than a standard air purifier—and a standard air purifier really doesn't use much energy at all.

Looks cool

I mean, just look at little Ovi! You can even change the colors on your phone to turn Ovi's belly into a lava lamp. Groovy.

So how does Ovi work?

Cofounders Sally Chen (an entrepreneur) and Professor Lucas Dong (a Stanford postdoc in Environmental Engineering) have spent the past three years figuring out how to fit everything that an industrial scale DAC facility can do into this bite-sized device.

They aren't sharing all their secrets, but I have it on good authority that Ovi works pretty similarly to the Mammoth plant I described earlier:

1. A fan draws air into Ovi, where a sorbent collects CO₂
2. When enough CO₂ builds up, Ovi washes the sorbent with a mixture of water and a liquid electrolyte, which strips the CO₂ from the sorbent
3. The stripped CO₂ reacts with a product that Atalanta calls "CapSul", a naturally occurring substance (they don't want to specify) that chemically converts the captured carbon into calcium carbonate—also known as limestone

The CapSul tablets, which will be sold separately or as a subscription service, need to be replaced every few days, depending on how much carbon Ovi is chowing down on, but the sorbent should last forever.

Once a week or so (depending your home's carbon concentration), you'll open Ovi's belly and remove the built up limestone dust. And once a month, you'll need to quench Ovi's thirst with a cup of water.

A pretty low-maintenance process for massively improved cognition and sleep quality, wouldn't you agree?

I want to see Ovi. I need to see Ovi.

Chill out, dude!

If you want to get up close and personal with Ovi, you better make your way to New York City.

Today's the first day of Climate Week here in New York, and yours truly will be showcasing Ovi at events all over the city, all week long—handing out swag and making limited time offers, like, that's right, 30% off the retail price.

Wanna win an Ovi?

Atalanta is giving away four Ovis for FREE to anyone who finds us at a Climate Week event. All you gotta do is share a pic on Instagram and follow and tag @atalantaclimate.

Of course, you can make sure you get one by reserving your Ovi RIGHT NOW on the Atalanta website. There are a few models—a bigger one, called Ovi Ultima, for the office (bosses: extract more productivity from your employees!), a smaller one for home, and even an Ovi with a titanium shell so you can take it rock climbing.

Reader, you can be one of the very first people on earth to put a Direct Air Capture device in your living room.

The planet, your brain, and your garden will thank you.